The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to antennas and more specifically to a device for mounting an antenna to a utility meter.
For many years, utility companies have employed meters for determining utility usage such as gas, water, and electricity for a particular household. These meters displayed utility usage in relevant units and were attached to the outside of the customer's home. Meters were displayed in this fashion so that employees from the utility companies could check and determine usage for billing purposes over fixed intervals. However, due to certain limitations, utility company employees had to physically visit a meter in order to record relevant data, resulting in a time consuming, labor intensive, and costly process.
Aside from being cumbersome, there were several other drawbacks to manual meter reading. For example, occasional expected human error would result in an erroneous reading of a meter, resulting in an inaccurate billing statement to a customer. Another example is the time consuming process of manually transferring meter readings into a database so that accounting departments could calculate a customer's required payment. Therefore, these inherent disadvantages in manual meter reading led to the development of automatic meter reading (AMR) technology.
AMR technology allows utility companies to automatically collect usage data from a household and transfer that information to a database for billing calculations. An integral component of an AMR module is the antenna that transmits local meter data to the service providers. Antennas can be mounted to the outside of the main structure of the meter mostly with adhesives, tapes, screws, or other mechanical means. Because AMR modules benefit from low cost, reliable, and easy removability and mounting of antennas, a device that accomplishes these goals may be desirable.